The promise of more rain.
In a letter to a friend I described myself as “becalmed,” as I felt suspended between a wet earth and a low dark sky reeking of more rain to come.
Layne’s reaction to the booster reminded me why I don’t want to get Covid. The effectiveness of the shots is always dubious for her as her rheumatologist has never located anywhere antibodies in her system.
However she always has the fiercest reactions to the vaccines as though she is well on her way to getting the disease. It took her 36 hours to find her feet and shake off her fever. Meanwhile I sat around wondering what to do.
I had planned some walks with Rusty in some parks familiar to me around Burlington but the incessant rain trapped me aboard with short umbrella breaks in the murk. I was getting cabin fever.
GANNET2 makes a comfortable home and inside we were quite snug with no humidity or condensation to bother us. Layne slept and I sat up front reading and ready to go. Go where? Anywhere. I like the going part of being a nomad.
I found a city park and it looked lovely on the shore of the lake. It’s last day of operation in 2022 was Labor Day. I saw no reason to close the park so arbitrarily at the official end of summer but no one was asking for my opinion. Up the road I found another place called Cohen Park. Photos above.
Thanks to the Cohen family for donating the land and for the town keeping the park open in the Fall, but… the toilets were locked. I wonder why? We carry our own toilet so no problem for us, but still.
I enjoy the Vermont countryside, it reminds me of England, the neat hedgerows and narrow winding roads of my youth -excellent motorcycle riding - but I’m not sure I could make it in a state where even some locals shudder in horror at the severity of winter.
I’m pretty certain I’m not tempered to survive say sitting in a damp duck blind waiting to kill one of a pair of mates flying overhead and enjoy the experience. Certainly not in the cold and damp of a stilt structure over a cold windy lake. Vermonters are a hardy people apparently.
Worrying about stuff like ice falling on me is also outside my comfort zone…
They do like their signage in Vermont.
I like the signs to Canada:
And then there’s Burlington the largest city in this state of 650,000 residents.
So we parked and walked to Church Street, the pedestrian heart of Burlington.
Church Street Market, designed to imitate a pedestrian zone first seen in Europe. Bill Truex, an architecture student was in Copenhagen in 1962 and saw a pedestrian zone and nagged people at home to do the same in Burlington. This pedestrian street was opened in 1981 and since I first saw it 6 years ago I’ve figured Duval Street should do the same but Key West is of a different mindset.
They even have benches to sit on where Key West, so scared of its bums moving in it removes any possibility of people relaxing and enjoying Duval. They even have City Hall right there on Church Street.
We finally got some sunshine so Layne got to see this street I had told her of so often. She has suffered from Church Street envy for a long time. That’s because last time we were here she was in the hospital getting her gall bladder removed and watching Fourth of July fireworks from her hospital bed overlooking the lake. She has wanted to walk Church Street ever since. This is the oldest building on the street, built in 1846, notable not just for being painted white but also for having a gabled (pointed) roof:
Rusty was anxious to sniff it all as though he remembered his last visit here…( the photo below I took that summer)…
…in July 2016. Four months after we got him we took him to Canada, no doubt the first time he’d ever left the heat of South Florida and he handled it with his usual poise. He’s an old hand at travel by now.
Black Lives Matter is an important theme in Burlington and you’ll see the signs everywhere even though barely one and a half percent of Vermont’s population is black and Vermont is not known for its Jim Crow obstructionism. If they really did dismantle white supremacy in the state, as Ben and Jerry’s desires, there would be no one left to run it. But that’s just me being obtusely practical.
I find it all rather ineffectively charming though it is a good deal less offensive than the armed book burners showing up at the library in Bonner’s Ferry in Idaho demanding censorship in the name of freedom.
Layne is not impressed. She says when we tire of being nomads Vermont will not be on the list. It’s too cold ten months of the year and for her, tropical lives matter. I stand corrected counselor.
